John Steinbeck Quotes About Virtue

Quotes about: Virtue

• We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.

  John Steinbeck

  Wife, Faithful, Attention

  John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.103, Penguin

• There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.

  John Steinbeck

  Wrath, People, Stuff

  John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.19, Hamilton Books

• We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

  John Steinbeck

  Eden, Evil, Vices

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.363, Penguin

• There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say.

  John Steinbeck

  Nice, Men, People

  John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.19, Hamilton Books

• Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.

  John Steinbeck

  Boys, Thinking, Design

  John Steinbeck (2001). “Novels, 1942-1952”

• For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost- good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word.

  John Steinbeck

  Worry, Gentleman, Gone

• Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.

  John Steinbeck

  Art, Father, Boys

  John Steinbeck (2001). “Novels, 1942-1952”

• It doesn't matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can't understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water?

  John Steinbeck

  Hands, Water, Black

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.116, Penguin

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